Sylvester McCoy
Sylvester McCoy (born 20 August 1943 as Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith) played The Seventh Doctor from 1987 to 1990, beginning from Time and the Rani to Blood and Iron. He reprised the role in the 1993 30th Anniversary Special The Dark Dimension, the Season 36 story The Lazarus Project, the Season 37 story Who Killed Kennedy?, and in the Season 40 story Conundrum before appearing in the first Doctor Who Motion Picture. Prior to Doctor Who He was born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith in Dunoon, Scotland. In his youth, he trained for the priesthood but gave this up and worked for a time in the insurance industry. He worked in The Roundhouse box office for a time, where he was discovered by Ken Campbell. He was a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones. He came to prominence as a member of the comedy act The Ken Campbell Roadshow. His best-known act was in a play called An Evening with Sylveste McCoy as a stuntman character called "Sylveste McCoy", whose stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose and stuffing ferrets down his trousers. As a joke, in order to make the audience believe that the character really existed, the cast listing in the programme billed Sylveste McCoy as played by "Sylveste McCoy", and after a reviewer missed the joke and assumed that Sylveste McCoy was a real person, Kent-Smith adopted it as his stage name. Some years later, he added an "r" to "Sylveste" — possibly because there were thirteen letters in "Sylveste McCoy". Notable television appearances before he gained the role of the Doctor included roles in Vision On (where he played Pepe, a character who lived in the mirror) and Tiswas. McCoy also played in one-man shows on the stage as two famous movie comedians, Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He appeared as Bowers in the 1985 television mini-series about Robert Falcon Scott's last Antarctic expedition, The Last Place on Earth, and had a small non-speaking role in the 1979 film version of Dracula, with Laurence Olivier and Frank Langella. (McCoy had also played the title role onstage.) In his Sylveste McCoy persona, he appeared in the first Secret Policeman's Ball film, a comedy/musical program in support of Amnesty International. The film was released to DVD in Region 1 in early 2009 as part of a box set of the Secret Policeman's benefits. Only months before being cast as the Seventh Doctor, McCoy played a villain in a B-film entitled Three Kinds of Heat, which featured appearances by a number of Who alumni including Trevor Martin and, most notably, onetime Romana I actress Mary Tamm, whose character was killed by McCoy's character. Work on Doctor Who Personal Life Selected Credits Doctor Who As the Doctor *Time and the Rani *Paradise Towers *Delta and the Bannermen *Dragonfire *Remembrance of the Daleks *The Happiness Patrol *Silver Nemesis *The Greatest Show in the Galaxy *The Curse of Fenric *Battlefield *Survival *Ghost Light *Earth Aid *Ice Time *Crime of the Century *Blood and Iron *Night Thoughts (archive footage) *The Dark Dimension *The Lazarus Project *Who Killed Kennedy? *The Name's Shakespeare, William Shakespeare (archive footage) *Conundrum Movies As the Doctor *Doctor Who (2003) As Father Parkinson * Doctor Who: Genesis Category:Actors Category:Actors that have played The Doctor